


First Principles

by Sholio



Series: Robot Jack AU [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Almost Human Fusion, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel never asked if Jack <i>wants</i> to be a cop. He's not entirely sure he should. (Takes place in the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7231090">Tin Soldiers</a> universe.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Principles

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt call on Tumblr, [sheron](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron) gave me this prompt: _"Do you even want to be a cop?" Daniel wants to know and robot!Jack has to think about it._ Originally posted [here on Tumblr](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/148238530538/do-you-even-want-to-be-a-cop-daniel-wants-to).

"Do you even want to be a cop?"

It was a question that had taken Daniel a whole lot longer to think of than he wanted to admit ... and longer than that to actually ask. He was a little ashamed (or maybe a lot) that he hadn't even wondered about it for months. Police-model Synthetics were cops. That was what they _were._ The question made no sense.

... except that, regardless of what he'd been created to be, Jack was a _person._ He had free will, and even if Jack insisted that his free will was limited in certain ways by his programming, Daniel was now able to come back with the counterargument that humans were too; they were programmed just as indelibly by instinct and biology.

But Daniel had chosen to join the police force. Jack never had a choice. From the day he'd opened his eyes at the Stark Synthetics factory, he'd been a cop. No one ever asked him what he wanted.

That was the thing Daniel should have realized at the beginning. But what truly made him writhe with guilt was that it took him months longer to actually ask. There were a number of reasons for that, but first and foremost, it seemed cruel to him to introduce the question if Jack hadn't wondered about it himself. Right now Jack seemed content with the status quo; he seemed _happy,_ even, as opposed to angry and miserable, which was how he'd been when Daniel had first met him.

And Daniel was not at all sure that quitting the police force would actually be an option for Jack. In fact, he was pretty sure that it wasn't, because as sick as it made Daniel to think about it, the police _owned_ him, and that wasn't a situation that was likely to change anytime soon. Was there any point in asking Jack what he wanted to do if he literally _couldn't_ do anything else? It seemed like a pointless path to misery for both of them.

And then there was the purely selfish side of it. If Jack did want to leave, would he resent Daniel for pushing him into policework in the first place? What if he managed to get himself transfered to some other agency -- because Jack was unbelievably stubborn, and Daniel could well believe that, even working within the strictures of a law that gave him no more rights than a block of cement, he might be able to find a way to get the police department to sell him to a hospital or daycare or sheep farm ... whatever it was that he decided to do with his life. And Daniel would lose him, as a police partner at the very least, and possibly in all other ways as well.

But what it came down to, in the end, was a simple moral question. It was wrong not to give him a choice. And after months of struggling with himself, Daniel finally gathered his courage and asked the question. They were lying tangled on the floor, because it was more comfortable than the couch for two people, one of whom was heavier than a normal human; they'd been idly watching a movie, but turned the sound off because neither was paying much attention. Now they were sprawled on the floor, lazily petting each other and chatting.

Jack didn't respond at first when Daniel asked him. Daniel had tried to toss it off as a casual question, but he found himself holding his breath, tensing up all over. Finally Jack said, with a faint smile, "That's what you've been thinking about, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on." Jack pushed himself up on his elbow. "You forget, I'm designed to analyze humans' physical state for hints to their emotional state. I know you've been conflicted lately. You're working your way through some kind of dilemma. I figured you'd talk about it when you wanted to."

"That's not an answer," Daniel said, a little grumpily. "Not the answer to the question I originally asked, anyway."

"Well, the answer is, what does it matter what I want? I'm a police Synthetic. That's what I am."

Daniel didn't want to admit how close his thoughts had run to this at times. "No, you aren't. You're a person. People get to decide what they want to do with their lives."

"I don't want to talk about it," Jack said, and he rolled over on top of Daniel, with his usual care not to hurt him with his greater strength and weight, and proceeded to distract him thoroughly.

But Daniel could tell that Jack was thinking about it in the following days. Jack might be able to detect tiny changes in body temperature, posture, the amount of blood in the skin, subtle movements of the facial muscles ... but Daniel was adept at reading _Jack,_ and he could tell when Jack was preoccupied.

"We can talk about it," he tried. "If you want to."

"Talk about what?"

"The cop thing."

"Drop it," Jack said, in a voice that was harder-edged than Daniel was used to hearing from him -- at least since the early days, when Jack was still a prickly ball of hostility who deflected any sympathetic overture as if he was being attacked.

And Daniel tried very hard to drop it. Jack had little enough autonomy as it was, and when he was actually willing to articulate an emotional need, Daniel tried as hard as he could to give him what he asked for. He did spend a day or two thoroughly wound up with the haunting dismay that he had done what he'd feared most: he'd made Jack angry at him, he'd set off a chain reaction of resentment that would destroy everything that had grown between them.

But Jack really didn't seem to be upset with him. Nothing was different between them, not in the bedroom and not at work. Daniel knew that Jack could lie, and he knew Jack could pretend to be okay when he wasn't, but Daniel could usually tell when he was doing it -- even if he couldn't specifically detect every lie, he was fairly sure Jack wasn't capable of putting on a convincing facade that their relationship was okay if it really wasn't. Not in a way that Daniel wouldn't be able to detect, anyway.

And Jack didn't seem unhappy either. He was merely thoughtful and a little withdrawn.

In the end, he was the one who brought it up. Daniel was eating dinner at the kitchen island in their apartment, while Jack hung out as he usually did -- he didn't need to eat, but he liked to watch Daniel eat, and he liked to dip a finger into whatever Daniel was eating and taste it. For that reason, Daniel had expanded his own eating habits, since he'd met Jack, far beyond the ruts he'd managed to sink into during a decade-plus of living on his own. He liked providing new foods for Jack to taste.

In the middle of sampling a Thai red curry, Jack said, "I like being a cop, you know."

Daniel finished chewing his bite before looking up at him. Jack looked calm, even a little amused by whatever he saw on Daniel's face.

"Well, it's not that I thought you _didn't_ like it," Daniel said, and dipped another forkful of curry and rice just in case he needed the pretext of a large bite of food to avoid answering any awkward questions. "Or that you shouldn't like it. It's just that ..."

"I don't have a choice. I know." There was a wryly amused note in Jack's voice.

"No," Daniel said flatly. "You _didn't_ get a choice. You have one now. You don't have to settle, Jack. You don't have to do this just because you think you couldn't do anything else."

Jack gazed at him for a little while with no particular expression on his face, then reached out and flicked his thumb across Daniel's chin, and smiled. "I like it when you get righteously indignant about me. It's cute."

"Jerk," Daniel muttered, cuffing his hand away. He stuffed a bite in his mouth.

"But seriously," Jack went on, "and to be completely honest, I never thought about it before you brought it up. But I'm glad you did. I like what we do. Maybe it's just because I'm programmed to like it --"

"Jack, don't --"

"But I _do_ like it," Jack went on over the top of him. "I like helping people. I like watching your back and making sure you're safe."

Daniel flushed; he couldn't help the surge of warmth and pleasure that tingled through him. "There might be something you'd like more," he pointed out.

"There might," Jack admitted. "And I might like to try some different things -- hobbies, you know? Maybe some volunteer work. Just to try it and find out what else I like."

"Anything," Daniel said. "Anything you want." And as he said it, he was struck all over again by how young Jack really was. Though intellectually and emotionally mature, Jack only had four and a half years of life experience to draw upon, and most of that had been spent within the strictly bounded life of a police Synthetic. Angie had been an extraordinary partner for him, and Daniel had often thanked God or fate or whatever that Jack had been paired up with someone who respected him and treated him well; he was fairly sure that only by the grace of Angie had Jack avoided the fate of most other Synthetics of his line -- they'd died in the line of duty, or committed suicide, or become so unstable and miserable that they'd been reformatted. (Murdered, Daniel thought. Call it what it is.) But even working with Angie, Jack had rarely gotten the chance to get out of the precinct and explore some of the other opportunities that the world had to offer.

_Like you've really done better in that area yourself, Sousa._ At least he made sure Jack _got_ days off now; he had an informal arrangement with Chief Dooley to give up a portion of his salary for those days off, in essence "renting" Jack from the department instead of having Jack assigned to other officers on Daniel's days off, as police Synthetics normally would be. So far, Daniel had managed to keep this arrangement from Jack, though he had a feeling Jack might have some inkling about it; he was very far from stupid. And Daniel did try to make sure they got out once in a while, going to sporting events and botanical gardens and the like. He'd seen more of the city since he'd been dating Jack than in his entire life prior to that.

But he was still a workaholic who spent most of his time on the job. Their brief, mutual forays into the city's cultural events were hardly a substitute for the lifetime of learning and exploration that most human children got to have. Most humans got twenty, twenty-five, thirty years before they ended up locked into a career, and that was even leaving aside the fact that Jack had never been expected, maybe not even allowed, to have any sort of life _outside_ his career.

"Earth to Sousa," Jack said, flicking his nose.

"Cut it out."

"You're thinking about me." Jack grinned. "You have the look."

"I have a look for that?"

"Sure, kind of dreamy and besotted."

"I do not."

"Yeah, you do." Jack leaned over and kissed him, a light brush of lips that were as soft and responsive as any human's could ever have been.

The thought occurred to Daniel that they'd come so far, so very far. He couldn't imagine having such an open and honest conversation with Jack, just a few months ago, about what Jack wanted -- what he needed.

And as Jack pulled back, grinning at him in a way that Daniel was pretty sure could be reasonably construed as pretty damn besotted in his own right, Daniel thought that it wouldn't be a bad thing to investigate a few of the other options the city had to offer. Maybe he'd download a few university catalogues, see if Jack wanted to take any long-distance classes. They could try some local ones too. Maybe Jack might like to learn to paint or do pottery or go canoeing or ballroom dancing or ... hell, there was a whole world of options out there.

He'd never really thought about just how _many_ options, or how few of them he'd actually tried himself, despite having the entire world open to him.

Getting into a new relationship was supposed to broaden your horizons, but Daniel couldn't help feeling as if every day with Jack opened up something new to him ... as if, along with his mechanical heart, Jack had given him the world.

" _Now_ what are you thinking about?" Jack wanted to know. "Your food's getting cold, by the way."

"I'm thinking about dragging you off to the bedroom and tearing your clothes off."

"Oh, _really?_ I like where this is going."

"And I'm thinking I love you. Love you so goddamn much it hurts sometimes."

He rarely got to see that much surprise on Jack's face. Got to kiss it off him, too.

And tomorrow, he thought, before giving over the rational part of his brain entirely to their current activities ... tomorrow, they might have to take another of his dwindling stock of personal days, and look up a few things online. There was an entire world out there waiting for them.


End file.
